What's A Few Zeros Among Friends?

Submitted Nov. 13, 1996
Violet
From Chicago, Illinois

• Before they had credit card machines that would spit out actual credit card slips for the customer to sign they had a machine to enter amounts and receive an authorization number. Then you had to imprint a carbon paper trio of copies. So this machine didn't really charge money to their account, it just "reserved" whatever amount you entered so it could not be spent until the actual bill came in. Many is the time we would accidently enter too many zeros on that amount to be authorized-- OOOOPS! Gosh, I hope they don't try to buy something and find that they've exceeded their spending limit! (Especially effective around Christmas.)